Dong Guan

This is a bird's eye view of a landscape in Dong Guan just north of Shenzhen. Dong Guan is developing quickly, rapidly resembling it's SEZ neighbor to the south. I'm also experimenting with this kind of on the fly post as a different medium for communicating than the standard blog post.
To recap the last post on milk, I've talked to some more locals, and it seems Chinese around here are reasonably hip to the propensity for corporate greed, but place less blame on government culpability in the problem than Western newspapers. One person understood my tack in questioning, and in turn was convincing me that people have a lot of freedom of speech in general even on political topics, certainly much more than in the past. Looking from their eyes, if the large American milk company Lucerne started giving people food poisoning, I would much sooner blame the company than draw the conclusion that the multi party system had to be overhauled, essentially the analog of some Western newspapers' arguments on the recent scandal. It's easy for me to realize, however, that such a scandal in the US would become easy fodder for political mud slinging in an election based on multiple parties, and would probably result in some positive action to improve food regulation. Personally, I think it would be nice if we had more than two parties to choose between every election cycle. Maybe some problems result from a strictly two party system that, just as with the Chinese, aren't so obvious to us either. Like them, I don't think we'll soon see commentary in our popular press on the topic. I don't know why.

Milk

Commenting on the latest media frenzy on China isn't my style because it feels like grandstanding. I'm not a Sinophile, so I'm not always paying attention to all the political dimensions at play, usually leaving me at a disadvantage to contribute to the conversation. But this business with the milk powder deserves some thoughts.
You don't have to be an expert in Chinese characters to be able to glean that the internal news coverage is being glossed over. Go to www.xinhua.net, the government's online news site. I've been visiting the past few days. This character, 奶, means "milk". Copy and paste the character into your browser's text search utility, and you'll find that coverage is far removed from the main headlines. Instead, headlines of China's space mission currently in progress reign supreme. In general I've picked up that China's internal news coverage is about instilling pride in the country and its place in the world. It's fun to follow this kind of coverage (usually through imagery for me for obvious reasons, but many Chinese article translations are also accessible), because I feel like I'm observing an important transition for a developing country. But if it happens at the expense of themes like the following excerpt, from an article by a Beijinger Cui Weiping, then it's not fair. This was accessed via the Washington Post, dated Sunday, September 28.

"What could I do after I heard something like this? Where could I go to report the problem? I can't think of any official in this vast country who would patiently listen to me and try to address the problem. Most officials would probably regard me as insane if I went to talk to them. They would glance at me arrogantly from behind their desks. I don't think I could stand the humiliation for even a few minutes. Why should I seek this disgrace?

"There are all kinds of things like this happening in the country. There's nothing I can do about it," I said to myself, trying to appease my conscience.

How pitiful I am. I already know that my effort will be useless even before I take any action. Is there a devil who lives in our hearts and sneers at our actions all the time? His mission is to deprive us of the ability to respond, to smother our enthusiasm, and to paralyze our will to take action. I am caught in the same situation as my imaginary, impassive official. Both of us are controlled by a curse and have lost the ability to take appropriate action . . .

However, my humanity has been hurt. The damage is immeasurable. Trapped in this kind of silence and not able to do anything about it, I feel bad about myself. I almost feel that I've become a pile of [dung], or a slave who only knows work but not how to speak. I chat and joke with people around me, but I am not able to talk about the biggest bewilderment on my mind.

To speak, or not to speak, this is the question. This is a question that is hard for our judgment. But what we've lost is the ability to make basic moral judgment.

-- Cui Weiping

(End quote)

At least one of the following links should allow you to easily access the full article in question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092603451.html
http://wordpress.com/tag/baby-milk-powder-scandal/

This excerpt reflects themes I've come across before, but mostly in reading about China in Western media. To the extent that Chinese news organizations still cover the tainted milk issue, I've been able to glean from poor automated translations that coverage focuses on blaming one company. There's little discussion of reexamining the regulation process at a higher level. And contrary to the excerpt, local Chinese folks I talk to as part of the everyday don't seem to be itching to get these kinds of thoughts off their chest. They know which milk to avoid, and that's all I hear from them about it. If they wanted to they would have no problem voicing such concerns since face-to-face conversations naturally aren't monitored.

Onward

With my last post, I signaled the close of this blog. But a lot's happened since then, and so it's time to start writing it up. I'll also reframe the scope of the blog. It's no longer a travel blog, but its focus is on expatriate (expat) life, particularly with regards to China.

About that: Yes, I'm back in China, in Shenzhen. In July, in and around France, I visited Brittany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and finally, Marseille with my dear mother. After her return home, I used the time in Marseille to determine the next step in my career, intending to do extended volunteer oriented work, where I could preferably apply engineering skills. That last condition narrows down the list *a lot*. However, towards the beginning of travels, I had made some inroads with a particularly appropriate socially oriented technology company. And so I remain in the profit-seeking world.

In looking over the blog history for references to Shenzhen, I realized I didn't write it up much. (By the way, kudos to the post-Olympics government for letting me proof my own blog, unlike before!) This was because I spent less than two days here. It's for the better anyways, as now I have the opportunity to talk a lot more about it. Shenzhen is not a travelling destination, it's a bit of a business hub, but with a very very low concentration of expats compared to, say, it's big brother Hong Kong to the south. Shenzhen is a wealthy place. To look out over the city is to walk through an excessively caffeinated architectural firm's display room. convention centers, government centers, major hotels, together look like a futuristic city from a space opera. The funny thing is, getting in at ground level, if you look hard enough, you can still find typical Chinese style hutongs sprinkled about. I should know, I live in one, and it's quite interesting (not to mention convenient - almost anything I want from rice cookers to barber shops at rock bottom prices). By contrast, the designer highrise apartment complexes that make up much of the residential space of downtown Shenzhen have a much lower local density of retail businesses, and even then only in the marble palaces that comprise your average Chinese shopping mall. It occurred to me one day as I was chowing away on semi-identifiable food in the hutong, that you can't eat marble. Anyways, before you think I'm slumming it Eastern-style all the time, I'm only there when I want a cultural dip. As I write, I'm in a starbucks.

Alas, life is not all bai cai and chicken feet, nor is it ventis and raspberry scones. Guangdong, the province Shenzhen is located in, particularly specialized in electronics manufacturing. With the help of local partners, I source and coordinate manufacturing for a consumer lighting product. The work scratches my itch for development oriented work, as the target customer is a low income consumer without reliable electrical access : e.g. much of India, rural China.

The earlier Chinese language study is starting to pay off - I can get through most of a day's work in the engineering areas without calling our bilingual OEM, who's often busy. You can teach each other technical words on the spot. Maybe one day I'll tell local engineers that the English word for 'resistor' is actually "lollipop". Can't wait to have them source 10,000 lollipops. Well, I like the sound of their term "dian zou" better. I keep up the studies, but only at 4 hours a week instead of 20+ like in Beijing. Character assimilation is slow, especially with such crutches as the fact that all non-elderly Chinese read my pinyin with no problem. Good computer input method editors make it far too easy to look like I know all kinds of characters. Here goes one: 中秋节快乐 means, "happy mid-autumn festival", an important holiday taking place this Sunday, which also gives everyone a day off on Monday. (People work they're behinds off around here, they deserve this holiday and more).

Another aspect of the work, which I probably more adopted than was assigned, is interfacing with venture capitalists. Socially oriented entrepreneurship is all the rage these days. And Asia has no shortage of heaping sums of money flowing around, as evidenced by the aforementioned monuments to modernisation of Gehry pedigree. Especially with close proximity to Hong Kong, networking with potential investors is exciting. And, to folks from the Sili Valley, don't worry, Sand Hill Road is well in our sights too.

To whet your appetites for the next post (god only knows when that will be), I'll write a heavily redacted description of the social aspects of expat life. (hey, an audience of wide scope reads this, you don't think everyone wants the sordid details, do you?)

One last note: When it comes to talking about business, I try to maintain some discretion - this is a startup, and like many startups with viable business plans, we have competitors. To the extent that you may glean details about our operations from my writings, do please be discrete as well. I've come to learn, mostly for the better, it's a very connected world after all. Sounds like the theme song for an up-revved Disneyland boat ride.

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